Pros - Dwarf is the fastest explorer to defend top offense and still grow at their speed of land gain. Exploring is much easier early on if your not in a big alliance full of attackers.

Cons - Converting to attacker only works if top alliances keep each other in check. With alliances running away it doesn't make sense to be passive early on. No strategy no matter how great will work if nobody stops 1 alliance from running away like what is happening now.

Buildings you should always have

Farms - 5-8% I like to keep around 10% more food created per hour than I eat unless I start stockpiling large amounts. Food spoiled is not much so I usually don't even put it in the market. I do store some food if it gets too high, but I leave some stockpiled at night to make it harder to starve.

Guilds - 5% I only cast self spells and information spells. I cast a lot of information spells and this is plenty of mana for me.

Hideouts - 5% This gives plans for spy information ops. This has always been plenty for me and I use lots of information ops.

Yards - 5-10% - You need 10% in the beginning when things are fast, and then they drop to 5-7% after first 8 hours. Stop building them when you have enough for more than 24 hours ahead.

Buildings at 500-1500 land

Academies 5% - You won't need more than this early on. You need 13% for race spells, but race spells suck this early. I don't think I would ever use dwarf race spells personally. Maybe the war one during war only and maybe the military spell late round while im sleeping and not training.

As many mines as you can fit after building the others. Dwarf with big mines is the fastest explorer and has the best chance of defending top offense while keeping up in land size with attackers. Labs are useless early on cause you are barely defending top offense and you need every amount of crowns for defense as you can. Also RPA doesn't scale well when your acres are moving so fast early on.

Strategy at 500-1500 land

Explore for the max of 125 acres. Calculate how much defense you can train in 3 hours of income. Train the amount of specs needed for that defense and keep that many leftover for when you leave protection and are building defense. Train 10-20 Spies. I like 20 cause I use lots of ops early. Use the rest of the money on the 0/5 defenders for maximum defense when leaving protection phase of game.

The reason you explore is raven and dragon are faster attackers, so it is much easier to survive exploring on a bigger economy without exchanging blows with faster races. Dwarfs economy is based on land size more and attackers suffer early on in land size while duking it out. Dragon and raven can survive lower land with pillaging or raiding because it constitutes a large percentage of their economy and the lower land size makes them less of a target. When you get to around 1.5-2k land the game slows down a lot and dwarf can convert around then.

By hour 1 after protection you will have the ability to use spells and spy ops. I usually wait till 30 minutes into the hour since most attackers have hit by then. Then I cast the spell flyover to gather alliance news about who is attacking. I start with the alliances with the most attackers. It is obvious when they are over 500 land cause explorers cant have over 500 land at hour 1. Some attackers use pillage with no land gained, so after I check out the ones that gained land, I use flyover spell on alliances with most attackers who haven't gained land. It should be noted that flyover doesn't have best success rate at 5% but I don't like going over that percentage.

After I get flyovers. I note who the attackers are targeting. Particularly the alliances with the most attackers. Are they hitting explorers in small alliances like mine? Are they hitting other big alliance attackers cause they want to war with each other right away? Then I use the intercept spy op on the attackers I think are most likely to hit explorers first and I check their offense.

Hopefully nobody is going suicidal. In that case at hour 4 explore for 25% of your land size. The only time you shouldn't do this is if you noticed the top explorers are not at 625 land anymore by hour 4 ( there should be several of these by hour 4). I not sure how overpowered offense is now, but back when I explored I would explore the maximum amount of my land at hour 0 and hour 4. Then there would be a long pause of defense training with no exploring.

When you explore next depends on top offense. You want a 10-15% cushion of overkill defense over top offense so you can sleep at night. Keep that cushion and explore when the cushion feels good for you. Don't look at other players with more land and less defense than you and assume you are safe to explore. Some people don't hit certain alliances for strategy reasons like fear of retaliation or war.

Repeat this growth strategy to 1,500 acres.

Strategy at 1,500 - 2,500 acres

The round begins to slow down around 1,500 - 2,500 acres. I think it is closer to 2,000-2,200 acres, but it depends on the round. When you sense things slowing down stop exploring.

If you want to be extra safe stop exploring at 1,500 acres. When you stop at 1,500 acres you won't be inside top offenses range which makes conversion smoother since you more at risk of being hit all in when stuck in that range. I personally won't stop until 2,000-2,200 cause that is when it really does start to slow down and if nobody has ran away the bigger land is better.

If you have plenty of defense I recommend switching over to 30% labs when you stop exploring. Invest in growth to 15 RPA. You need your entire alliance dedicated to 30% labs and growth research only or you have to play solo which sucks. If you save gold for offense in mass in the market, you can use it all after the growth research is done, which means the military cost reduction is insanely good for dwarf converter. Before massing your offense in 1 mass push, Build 20% barracks. Normally I wouldn't recommend barracks for dwarf, but buildings are so cheap and they saved up so much crowns for conversion that the barracks build before massing offense in 1 push will save insane amounts of money.

Once you hit 15 RPA in growth research destroy labs for mines and save up gold and basics in the market for a long time. You should look at targets compared to how much gold you have saved up for offense pushing to determine when to convert. Hitting over 100% multiple times is probably going to be best. Anything less than that was a waste of ending your big explorer economy. Also when you convert push weaponries and maybe even walls if your low on defense. When you are not attacking destroy walls and weaponries for mines.

After you see spies hitting 2,000 acres it is a good idea to run at least 10% guard houses. Spies can wreck dwarves mines outside of war and overpopulate them. Spells can be annoying as well. I like having 13% academies by that point. I tend to go academies over churches, but in war churches might be necessary.

You can repeat the following phase to max your economy mid to late round. When you can't attack anymore above 75% land size turtle for a long time and run max mines for big economy. Sell it all to the market along with basics so nobody can see them as easily. When you are ready to attack, rezone to 20% Barracks and use all of the gold you saved up. (remember buildings are dirt cheap and you saved enough gold for barracks rebuilding to save you tons of money)

After you build all your troops destroy the barracks and build max weaponries and walls. Keep them maxed through your hitting phase. Destroy walls and weaponries when you can't hit over 75% land size anymore and repeat the cycle after your hitting phase is over. This will give you maximum economy and offense/defense later in the round when attacks happen less often.

Repeat the attack and turtle/economy phases mid to late round for your best chance to win. Never give up cause sometimes people kill the top attackers with spies and mages.

During wars dwarf probably wants max thief/mage protection buildings. They have low population and there is so many things that can kill them in a war. They are even weak to building damage outside a war so watch out. This is one of the most flexible races and they are probably the only race that can fit 20% walls and forges late round.

killodoggy - February 2019

* Edited 1 time

Raven fast attacker

Pros

If dragon gets a real nerf that they deserve, then I calculate this to be the fastest race based on my math.

Easily safe defense once you get past beginning suicide phase of game.

ruins enemy suiciders rounds in safest way possible.

1 raid per hour give 60% more income per hour at 100% land size hits and 4 raid land gains every 4 hours is almost equal to 1 standard hit every 4 hours. This means the same land size growth as a standard attacker hitting every 4 hours but only using raids . With such a high raid income they can fall a little behind on land and still have the best economy. (economy is more important than land size, especially early on in the round)

Also raids have less casualties which adds up when you are hitting every hour.

Cons

Requires lots of activity attacking every hour change you are awake preferably.

Any raven build will have to worry about population death past 2,000 acres.

Buildings you should always have

Farms - around 8% I like to keep around 10% more food created per hour than I eat unless I start stockpiling large amounts. Food spoiled is not much so I usually don't even put it in the market.

Guilds - 3% (20% barracks give 2% guilds for 5% total) I only cast self spells and information spells. I cast a lot of information spells and this is plenty of mana for me.

Hideouts - 3% (20% barracks gives 2% hideouts for 5% total) This gives plans for spy information ops. This has always been plenty for me and I use lots of information ops.

Yards - 5-7% early on, then drop them as you accumulate lots of spare lumber.

academies - 5% - Plenty for the beginning. Only using self spells and information spells. You can switch to 13% during a war for general return time racial spell, but otherwise stay at 5%.

Barracks - 20% - Why 20% from the start? Read my math below.

500 land economy
30 % homes 108,900
42% mines 104,370
Raid income per hour from 100% land size hits -130,000
20% barracks only lowers mine income 16% math-wise because they count as 2% hideouts and guilds which frees up 4% mines.
20% barracks = 21% more troops per crowns spent. (17.5 / 82.5 = 21% )
16% less mines - 39,680
343,270 - 39,680 = 303,590
39,680 / 303,590 = 13%
This means that 20% barracks gives you 13% less crowns per hour than mines, but your barracks give 21% more troops per crowns spent. Since most of your crowns are spent on troops the barracks are 50% more effective than mines or 21% more income.

All of this math does not include the income barracks give from holding military, which means barracks are even stronger than these calculations for this raven strategy.

26% land left for Mines or labs?

Mines are tempting because you can defend top offense quicker with them, but labs are looking too insane for this build to pass up.

Growth research is insane with your base income so high from raids, making lab potential crazy.

20% research = 82.5 - 20 = 62.5

20/62.5 = 32% more troops per crowns spent on troops. = 32% more income which is insane. The other research won't be as powerful because it modifies your economy only and doesn't help your massive raid economy.

26% labs would take 2.4 days to max research with no land growth. Even with land growing over time it will max out research fast. Once growth research maxes out you can drop most labs for mines for even crazier growth. Keep enough labs to stay at 14-15 RPA in growth without going over. Everyone must use lab strategy with maxing growth research right away for this to work or you will have to do this strategy in a solo alliance which sucks.

This would be even more insane if you had explorers in your alliance sacrifice their growth with 30% labs and raven had no labs and only mines.

I think labs actually beat mines on this race by day 3-4 because of the nutty raid economy. But I wouldn't blame you for running mines in protection until you can at least defend against top offense. Starting them after you can defend top offense would be safest in my opinion. Buildings are so cheap it is not big deal to destroy mines for labs after you can defend top offense. I think this is more of a personal preference thing. I also wouldn't blame anyone for running labs from the beginning. The faster you max growth research the faster this races economy goes crazy.

Strategy at 500 land

Train 20 spies. Have enough specs ready to train 4-5 hours worth of economy in defense. dont use these in protection save them for hours 1-3. You need more than 3 hours worth of your economy in specs cause your raid economy is crazy.

Use the remaining gold to train 66% defense and 33% offense. Use specs only. Elites are too slow and cost a lot more income to replace on offense. Don't make any elites till the round slows down around 2k land and you run out of targets.The goal is to have enough offense to hit suiciders, while having the max defense to stop most players from hitting you. If you want to be super risky you can run 20% offense and 80% defense, but if you can't hit then that hurts you at least 4 hours. most of the time someone will play suicidal dragon or suicidal something.

When you first leave protection you can't use spells or info ops yet. So if someone attacks blindly and gains land hour 0 then they are probably a suicide dragon or maybe other suiciding race. You can hit them blindly but you run the risk of bouncing and having troops return much slower. I wouldn't take the risk personally, but that is cause I try to piss off as few of people as possible early on when I am weak.

After first hour change wait about 30 minutes and use flyover on top attacking alliances. Use intercepts to find a suicider, preferably an alliance with only 1 suicider to retaliate. Hit the suicider with raids every hour over and over and use that raid money to push your defense to higher levels. It doesn't matter if anyone land grabs you, just keep raiding and pushing defense until you are unbreakable. Preferably only hit 1 suicider to only piss off 1 person until your defense is safe from suicides. Then you can start hitting best raid targets possible after you can defend yourself and have money to start pushing offense.

If there are no suiciders or you run out of offense to even hit suiciders you can slowly push enough offense to hit suiciders again. The goal is to hit easiest 75%+ suicide targets with raids and get yourself unhittable with defense as fast as possible. Your economy should be so amazing that you should be able to defend top offense by hour 12-24 from suiciders and then you can start pushing top offense yourself if nobody else is using this strategy. If I did the math correctly then this is the fastest attacker in the game.

Strategy at 1,500 land plus

When you see mages and thieves reaching 2k land it is a good idea to switch to some defense for them. I not sure how bad it is by 2k land, but I am guessing 13% academies and 10% guard houses is enough to defend yourself from overpopulation and stop most people from messing with you by 2k. In the case of a war go up to 20% of both of them just in case. I could be wrong on this cause I have overpopulated before. If you are not sure use as many protection buildings as you can without sacrificing necesseties or barracks.

Pretty simple from here on out. Raid, raid, raid and raid. Only when the round slows down a lot and you can't find targets for a while should you start to use attacks like commandeer or standard attack. If a long term opportunity opens up that only you can take advantage of feel free to start raiding again, but it will be rare end round and commandeer or standard grabs will be safer. You want to get land while its there and you want land more end round to save yourself from overpopulation.

Just like any other race be ready to push walls for defense boosts when other attackers try to catch you off guard with weaponry pushes. If you want to be immune to weaponry pushes you need like 20% more defense than top offense which is unrealistic. Your only option in my opinion is to push your own walls/weaponries in response and temporarily hurting your economy, but messing them up and hitting them out of range so their economy sucks so bad they can never wall/forge push on you again. After taking them out get rid of walls and forges since they are not good for your economy.

2,500 acres plus

When you run out of targets for more than 24 hours and even wall/forge pushes won't give you enough offense to hit anything then it is time to start retraining spec offense into elite offense. This will help prevent you from overpopulating and the elites are a fair price if you use them as defense also by hitting at the end of the hour change.

killodoggy - February 2019

*Edited 1 time.

Peaceful Owl Explorer

Pros

Crazy income potential. Beats raven/dwarf if you can survive to 2.5k acres.

Don't have to worry about enemy thieves.

Can stop most spells once you get to 2.5k land.

Cons

Can't use much spy damage offense without weakening yourself to mages and dying.

Requires lots of logins after 2k land.

High risk strategy that could die from bad luck. Need reliable internet.

You are highly vulnerable to spells early on, unless you are willing to slow down and defend spells early on.

There is a lot of stuff that can go wrong and kill you. Play this build at your own risk.

Buildings you should always have

Farms - around 8% I like to keep around 10% more food created per hour than I eat unless I start stockpiling large amounts. Food spoiled is not much so I usually don't even put it in the market.

Guilds - 5% I only cast self spells and information spells. I cast a lot of information spells and this is plenty of mana for me.

Hideouts - 5% This gives plans for spy information ops. This has always been plenty for me and I use lots of information ops.

Yards - 5-7% early on, then drop them as you accumulate lots of spare lumber.

academies - 5% - Plenty for the beginning. Only using self spells and information spells.

Mines - Build as many as you can after covering the above buildings.

Strategy 500-1,500 acres

Read the dwarf 500-1,500 acre strategy above. Most of it covers this part of the round. Owl is not as fast as dwarf so don't expect to run away with the round.

You should only build spies. The spies not only count as cheap defense, but their crown production is insane when you get to higher land.

Juranimosity spell can hurt you a lot. Try to stay more overdefended than normal. After day 1 try to stay 100-200 acres below top explorers so you are less of a juicy target for top attackers. If people start targeting you with juranimosity before 1,500 land then raise your academy level to the enemies or higher so they don't mass the spell on your defenders and then invade you with your defense lowered. Watch their academies and react accordingly.

Strategy at 1,500-2,000 acres.

Get 20% academies by 1,500 acres. If mages haven't made you do this yet, then do it now. You may need more for early wars or early pushes from mages in big offense alliances. Mages can lower your defense a lot if you don't have academies up.

By 1,500 acres your self ops and spy numbers will be at a decent enough rate to start using self ops. They might take some casualties on self ops so overdefend just a little before doing them. Do Templo Ambulo For crowns. You are still trying to grow as fast as you can so research is not worth it yet.

Send all thieves at the end of the hour with 1-2 seconds before hour changes. I have good internet so I do it with 1 second. This is where it gets risky cause someone with a better internet might invade you within a split second. Or if you lag when you click you might send all thieves on the next hour change and have no defense. It is a huge risk and reward thing.

Repeat the templo ambulo operation every hour changes at the end of the hour change from here on out.

2,000 - 2,500

Academies should be at 30% by 2,500 acres. Juranimosity hurts a lot by this point in the round and land is hard to come by so mages are thirsty and desperate to take you down. Your economy is nuts by 2,500 acres so big academies won't hurt your economy much.

The round usually slows down by 2,000-2,200 acres. You might be stuck at 1,800-1,900 cause owl is not quite as fast as dwarf. Depends on if someone has ran away with the round or not. It is important to slow down a lot at this point and overdefend top offense by at least 25% at this point, because people will push walls/forges and use other tricky stuff when things slow down like hiding gold in market to hit you with insane offense bursts out of nowhere.

When round comes to a stop and you've overdefended start using naponemetry to gain research. If you have some room for labs you can use them as well, but don't lower your academies below enemy threats. Maxing politics research is crucial and starting research is best when round slows down. The 50% self ops bonus is the biggest economy bonus for any race. With this race most of your income will be coming from self ops.

After politics research is maxed, you can either max growth research or go back to templo ambulo and grow in land. Growth research is not as powerful, but when round is stagnating and you can't move into top offenses range then maxing research is usually a better long term strategy for coming from behind.

After 2,500 land

After you get massive spell protection and big spies you can get rid of your farms and use self operations for food. Keep plenty of extra food around before sleeping and only destroy farms after you have overkill protection from spells.

Barracks are best speed thing at this point. Assuming you have room and are not doing research still with labs.

Your economy should be nuts by 2,500 land. Once you get more than 80% of your citizens drafted into military either explore if safely possible or you must start building elite defense. Even with great spy and mage protection 20% or lower is dangerous and so elites will stop you from getting too low on peasants. This isn't usually a problem until like 3k land unless the round is really slow.

If someone has run away with round stay just below the 70% land range of anyone who can invade you. You want the max possible income to generate enough defense to survive them once you explore into their range. You may need to temporarily use walls to defend them when you come into range since their economy might beat yours.

Math of spies economy

60% of spy self op gains, but can use them once per hour.

By 3,000 land spy operations should be at 100% effectiveness minus 40% from race difference.

20 * .6 = 12

This means each spy makes 12 crowns per hour on average. Compare this to citizens making 2 crowns per hour on average. That is 6 times the economy of anyone else while you are awake and have internet access. On top of this all this money is almost free cause it counts as cheap defense on top of giving you all this income.

When you do self operation for crowns I recommend maximum attempts at the level listed for you of spies and make sure stop on success is not checked. Doing lots of attempts gives you more reliable currency since the missions give radically different amounts of crowns you find. If you send all units in 1 self op mission and they fail or get low gains it is annoying. In the long run both strategies will give the same amount of gold on average though.